Bitcoin

Bitcoin.com is always been on a quest to promote Bitcoin adoption. Our educational resources, forums, newsdesk, and other services reflect that mission on a daily basis. Now our web portal is introducing a feature called Local Bitcoin Cash, a service that facilitates the peer-to-peer trading of local currency for bitcoin cash (BCH). The new service will be launching soon and users will be able to directly exchange BCH securely and without know-your-customer (KYC) requirements.

Local Bitcoin Cash

Over the last few years, cryptocurrencies have grown increasingly popular and those digital assets are far more accessible than they were in the early days. As the industry has matured, Bitcoin.com has grown into an extensive Bitcoin-themed web portal that offers a wide array of resources and services that bolster cryptocurrency accessibility. Now, Bitcoin.com is proud to announce the launch of a new service called Local Bitcoin Cash. The peer-to-peer exchange will be a great resource for the community and will advance our continued mission to promote economic freedom to everyone in the globe by introducing them to the great benefits of BCH.

The Local Bitcoin Cash trading platform will have three key ingredients that will make the exchange different to most peer-to-peer exchanges. Firstly, privacy will be of utmost importance and there will be no KYC verification required for Local Bitcoin Cash users. Secondly, the platform will provide end-to-end user side encryption; a system of communication where only users can read and decrypt their messages. Finally, just like our popular noncustodial Bitcoin.com Wallet, the peer-to-peer Local Bitcoin Cash exchange will be secure as the service never touches your funds.

Local.bitcoin.com will be launching soon and our readers at news.Bitcoin.com can get on the list to receive early bird notification when the Local Bitcoin Cash trading platform goes live.

An Exchange That Bolsters Bitcoin Cash Accessibility

The trading platform will allow users to see who’s buying and selling so that “offers” can be considered. Anyone in the world can post a bid to buy or sell BCH and all offers can be filtered by payment method, currency, location, and popularity. There will be a wide array of accepted payments from bank transfers and gift cards so people can purchase and sell bitcoin cash using a variety of payment methods.

Once you find a proposal you’re happy with, simply open a trade with anyone on Local.bitcoin.com. Choose the amount of bitcoin cash you want to buy or sell, and then lock the rate in. After the traders reach an agreement they can then make the exchange. Payment details are always discussed using end-to-end encrypted messages. From there, the BCH goes into an escrow account and once the seller confirms payment, the BCH is released from escrow to the buyer.

As mentioned above, bitcoin cash adoption and accessibility is one of Bitcoin.com’s primary goals and over-the-counter platforms are some of the most private ways to purchase cryptocurrencies. Moreover, not everyone in the world has access to a local trading exchange so in some countries peer-to-peer platforms are the only way to buy digital assets. A multitude of payment methods also extends crypto penetration even deeper because most online exchanges only offer a few funding options. Local.bitcoin.com will be launching soon and our readers at news.Bitcoin.com can get on the list to receive early bird notification when the Local Bitcoin Cash trading platform goes live. Simply head to the Local Bitcoin Cash portal and click on the button marked “Stay notified.”

What do you think about our upcoming service Local.bitcoin.com? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

At Bitcoin.com there’s a bunch of free helpful services. For instance, have you seen ourTools page? You can even look up the exchange rate for a transaction in the past. Or calculate the value of your current holdings. Or create a paper wallet. And much more.

In this edition of The Daily, we feature a couple of announcements by leading crypto exchanges. Binance starts selling cryptocurrency for cash at newsagent stores in Australia, while Huobi is launching its new token listing platform. In other news, Aeternity and Satoshipay join forces to offer faster crypto micropayments andNvidia expects to clear mining chip inventory in this quarter.

Binance to Sell Cryptocurrencies at Newsagents in Australia

Binance, the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchange by volume, has announced the launch of Binance Lite Australia, a platform that will allow local residents to buy cryptocurrency at more than 1,300 newsagents across the country. Currently, the new cash-to-crypto service supports only purchases of bitcoin core (BTC) with Australian dollars (AUD) but other digital coins and fiat currency options will be added in the future.

To acquire the crypto, customers will have to place an order online and then deposit the cash at the nearest newspaper kiosk. But before they can do so, they will have to provide their personal details and pass account verification on the website of the platform, binancelite.com. Verified users will be able to place their orders and receive the coins within minutes, the exchange promised in a blog post. Binance Lite Australia will charge a 5 percent fee for the service.

Token Launchpad Huobi Prime to Go Live on Tuesday

Digital asset exchange Huobi announced the launch date of its new token listing platform. Huobi Prime will go live next Tuesday, March 26, the company revealed in a tweet this week. The first campaign based on Huobi’s launchpad will be held by a project called TOP Network, which will distribute 1.5 billion TOP tokens among its users in three 30-minute rounds.

According to the announcement, Huobi Prime will allow crypto projects to trade their coins immediately in a model described by the exchange as “direct premium offering.” Tokens issued through the platform, which is an alternative to Binance Launchpad, may be listed in the future on Huobi Global and Hbus in trading pairs with USDT, BTC, ETH, and KRW.

Aeternity Invests in Micropayment Platform Satoshipay

Aeternity, a project developing a blockchain protocol for smart contracts with open code, has acquired a stake in Satoshipay. According to a press release, the deal was sealed during the latest financing round for the micropayment service. Satoshipay will now be able to integrate Aeternity nanopayment solutions and offer its users faster transactions.

Axel Springer SE, one of the largest digital content companies in Europe which runs news outlets such as Upday, Die Welt, Bild, and Business Insider, will be among the first users of the new services offered by Aeternity and Satoshipay. Its users will be able to pay for the content with cryptocurrency via the Satoshipay wallet.

Nvidia to Clear Mining GPU Inventory

Video card manufacturer Nvidia is expecting to soon clear the excess inventory accumulated in anticipation of high demand for cryptocurrency mining equipment. The company believes it will manage to achieve that during Q1 of 2019, according to comments made by its CFO Colette Kress during a meeting with investors in California this past Tuesday, Bloomberg reported. The stockpile of unsold graphics processing components was created when the sales of chips dropped last year following the decline in cryptocurrency prices.

What are your thoughts on today’s news tidbits? Tell us in the comments section.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

At Bitcoin.com there’s a bunch of free helpful services. For instance, have you seen ourTools page? You can even lookup the exchange rate for a transaction in the past. Or calculate the value of your current holdings. Or create a paper wallet. And much more.

An Indian crypto exchange has launched a program that allows its users to earn interest on their cryptocurrencies held at the exchange. Initially, users can lend BTC, USDT, BNB, XRP, and ETH. The CEO of the exchange has shared details about this new offering with news.Bitcoin.com.

Lending Cryptocurrencies

Coindcx announced Thursday that its crypto lending program called Dcxlend has come out of the beta testing phase and is now fully launched. Five cryptocurrencies are supported: BTC, USDT, ETH, XRP, and BNB.

The exchange detailed that there are “three lending term lengths: 7 days, 15 days, and 30 days. The interest rate varies dynamically and goes up to a maximum of 2%, according to market dynamics — demand and supply.” Furthermore, its website states that “the cryptocurrencies lent through Dcxlend will be used to provide leverage to users on Dcxmargin,” another service the exchange offers.

Gupta shared with news.Bitcoin.com that during the beta testing period with just BTC and USDT, “we had roughly 120 lenders which led to a circulation of 170 BTC on a daily basis.” Claiming that the program has recently garnered more attention from lenders, he remarked, “Hence we’re scaling it up and will keep on adding more coins.”

The CEO explained that his exchange has an internal settlement and liquidation mechanism for margin trading which does not have “a dedicated funding wallet,” elaborating:

Funds are then lent to the users only when the margin trade is open, with no withdrawal access and hard liquidation with 7.5% maintenance margin.

Similar Programs Worldwide

In the U.S., Blockfi recently introduced a savings account that enables customers to earn 6.2 percent annually on their BTC and ETH. Meanwhile, regulated bitcoin derivatives exchange and clearinghouse Ledgerx has a program called Ledgersavings which allows clients to earn an implied rate of around 16 percent annually.

In Japan, regulated exchange GMO Coin launched a lending program for BTC, BCH, ETH, LTC, and XRP last year. However, at the time of this writing, the exchange is only borrowing BTC but customers can lend between 10 and 500 BTC over 181 days and earn up to an annual rate of 5 percent.

Recently-licensed Japanese exchange Coincheck, which was hacked in January last year, also has a lending program for BTC with a maximum annual rate of 5 percent. Prior to the hack, this service supported 12 cryptocurrencies.

Bitbank, another regulated Japanese exchange, also offers up to 5 percent interest annually for users lending between 1 and 25 BTC. Besides BTC, the exchange plans to extend the offer to BCH, ETH, LTC, XRP, and MONA.

Would you lend your cryptocurrencies to an exchange? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Disclaimer: Bitcoin.com does not endorse or support claims made by any parties in this article. None of the information in this article is intended as investment advice, as an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or as a recommendation, endorsement, or sponsorship of any products, services, or companies. Neither Bitcoin.com nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

A Bitcoin Cash (BCH) supporter recently noted that the biggest hindrance to cryptocurrency adoption is tax laws and reporting taxes on digital currency usage. After reading the commentary, Bitcoin.com CEO Roger Ver shared a four-minute video about the subject of taxes in order to spark questions in the minds of people who might not understand what taxes are and why they have hindered the crypto economy.

This Short Animation Teaches About Taxation and Why People Believe it Is Immoral

On March 10, the Bitcoin.com Official Youtube channel aired a brief video called “George Ought to Help,” an animated short on taxes and a universal agreement called the Non-aggression Principle. Bitcoin.com’s owner Roger Ver shared the video because a lot of cryptocurrency advocates have been talking lately about how taxation is not helping the crypto economy flourish. In fact, the process is constraining the digital currency industry with old school shackles that don’t fit this technology. The animated short “George Ought to Help” explains the idea of taxation in very simple terms by not leaping to conclusions but by merely asking a few thought-provoking questions.

The video asks you to imagine that you have a friend called George that you’ve known since childhood. However, you two are not as close as you were back when you were children, but you still meet George from time to time and get along very well. But one day while hanging out with George, another mutual friend named Oliver approaches who explains that he’s had a run of bad luck. Oliver details that he’s raising money for tuition fees for his kids and you decide to help Oliver out by giving him some money. George, however, does not offer any help and you try and persuade him but George just won’t budge. The video then asks an important question:

Imagining yourself in this situation — Do you think it’s okay to threaten to use physical force against George to get him to do the right thing?

In another example, the video asks you to imagine a slightly different situation. In this example, a group of your friends take a vote and 6 out of 10 are in favor of threatening George to get him to help Oliver. Again, another interesting question arises from the situation and the video’s narrator asks: “Does this democratic process make it okay to threaten George?” And with one last change to the concept, the video’s narrator supposes this time that thousands of people have democratically agreed that a group called the ‘agents’ shall do whatever is necessary to take money from George and give it to Oliver’s family.

The agents don’t explicitly threaten George at first as all they do is send him a bill. Like everyone else, George knows what will happen if he doesn’t pay the bill. First, he will get more letters demanding payment and the bill will get bigger. Eventually, if he still doesn’t pay, the agents with guns will break into his house and take him away against his will. Almost everyone pays the bills without question because they know that agents are prepared to use as much force as necessary to overpower those who resist. The video’s narrator poses another question to the viewer:

Do you think it’s acceptable for the agents to threaten violence against George if he doesn’t give his money to helping Oliver’s family?

Bitcoin’s Peaceful and Permissionless Existence Is the Exact Opposite of Compulsory Tax Collection

The video further explains that if a forced redistribution of wealth is approved by society then people must also accept that violence made against peaceful individuals is okay. Right now, in nearly every nation state, the use of violence, force, and coercion is how taxes are collected. Most of us feel uncomfortable with making these threats on our own, so with the so-called democratic system, people can accept the process when violence is executed by agents of the state. Over the last few decades, a growing number of people have came to believe that taxation is immoral because it is a form of theft due to its inherent use of threats of violence that transgress against property rights.

The animated short “George Ought to Help” shows how enforcing compulsory tax collection goes against society’s underlying non-aggression axiom or the golden rule. Known as the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP), it holds that it is immoral to initiate or threaten force against a peaceful individual’s property, even when a large majority of people vote to use force. However, as a large society, we have found that using ‘agents’ and so-called ‘representatives’ helps people ignore the NAP, because the person doesn’t have to accept responsibility for their actions if they decide to initiate violence. Using the ballot box to enforce taxes is far easier than attempting to collect these funds on your own.

Bitcoin allows for peaceful and voluntary trade in a permissionless manner and the idea that regulations and taxation will help bolster the crypto economy is absurd. Compulsory tax collection is the complete opposite of the inherent nature of Bitcoin and the technology’s peer-to-peer innovation. There is a reason taxes and cryptocurrencies mix like oil and water and the four-minute animated film gives a great explanation to why this is the case. People should forget about the complicated process involved with crypto taxes and question the very nature of taxation because to this day the system continues to encourage violence and the use of force against peaceful individuals.

Do you want to learn more about taxation, the NAP, and voluntaryism? Check out the links below for more resources including the short animation “George Ought to Help” by Tomasz Kaye.

At Bitcoin.com there’s a bunch of free helpful services. For instance, have you seen ourTools page? You can even look up the exchange rate for a transaction in the past. Or calculate the value of your current holdings. Or create a paper wallet. And much more.

Borderless isn’t like other decentralized exchanges (DEXs). For one thing, it comes with its own blockchain – or rather the Block Collider chain comes with its own DEX. Throw in the ability to perform cross-chain transfers, block times that are 3x faster than Ethereum and no limits on order size, and Borderless would appear to be markedly different from the competition. News.Bitcoin.com was given a walkthrough of the new DEX, which is due to go live in the next few weeks.

Welcome to the Multiverse

To understand Borderless, it’s necessary to know a little about Block Collider. The project, whose ICO hit its $7M cap in minutes last April (with over $500M pledged) is now operational, with its Multiverse block explorer showing the network’s current state of play. In addition to the shooting stars that occasionally whizz across the screen, there’s a few other peculiarities to the Block Collider network and its Multiverse explorer, whose defining feature is its interoperability. 2019 will see a string of blockchain projects come onstream that promise to eliminate the “walled garden” effect that renders networks incapable of communicating with one another. Cosmos, Polkadot and Block Collider are leading the movement for cross-chain play.

Block Collider’s solution is to create a blockchain whose mining algorithm consumes blocks from other blockchains as part of its mining computational challenge. Its website explains: “Miners who submit a bad block as their proof of work will be rejected by other miners and won’t get the block reward. As the difficulty rises, the same incentive framework that strengthens the Bitcoin blockchain will reinforce alignment with miners of the Block Collider.” The project has launched with five blockchains initially – BTC, ETH, WAVES, LISK and NEO – with an unnamed sixth to be added later. Block Collider essentially enables smart contracts on separate networks to talk to one another, which has a number of significant applications, not least when it comes to decentralized token trading.

How Borderless Works

Borderless by Block Collider is a high-speed DEX that strives for a higher degree of decentralization than, say, Binance DEX. That’s because Borderless doesn’t have validators or centralized oracles to act as gatekeepers. Binance DEX, in comparison, has 11 validators all controlled by the exchange itself. Borderless, which is weeks away from full public release, enables cross-chain transfers between Bitcoin Core, Ethereum, NEO, Lisk, and Waves, has a simple UI that’s easy to use, and no restrictions on order size or trading volume.

News.Bitcoin.com caught up with Block Collider co-founder Arjun Raj Jain to learn more about how Borderless works and observe a platform walkthrough. “You simply download the application for either Windows, Mac or Unix,” began Jain. “Then you upload your wallet, but nothing is being stored or sent to a centralized server. When you are uploading your wallet, what you’re doing is just encrypting it locally, so that anytime you then submit a transaction, you don’t have to type in your private key.” Like Nash, Borderless creates a mnemonic phrase upon setup that can be used for wallet recovery.

Visually, Borderless looks much like a conventional exchange, with an order book that displays buy and sell orders and market depth. There are some additional settings that are unique to Borderless, however, such as the ability to set the maximum amount of collateral for the trade, which is denominated in NRG, the native currency used to reward miners; the project also has a second currency, emblems.

“Emblems allow miners to increase their block size, hence earn more energy, the more emblems that they hold,” said Jain. “So you can think of it as a hedge against your decaying hardware. And it also serves the purpose of the whole debate that Bitcoin maximalists have on what the block size should be, right? So instead of having a fixed size, we thought it would be a lot more interesting to instead have a dynamic block size that is controlled by emblems.”

A Blockchain to Control Blockchains

To verify the state of each blockchain within the Block Collider network, without reliance on some sort of central entity to oversee matters, Jain explained, “we actually bake that into the proof of work algorithm that the miners are doing where anytime any of the underlying blockchains issues a block, the task of the miners is basically to find a hash that is closest to that. This permits you to be the miner that can release that block, so it’s kind of the same brute force mechanism that Bitcoin miners have to do for proof of work to find a hash that ends in a certain amount of zeros.” He continued:

So by combining a proof of work, and then having this capacity to also verify the state of each blockchain, you now have a completely decentralized mechanism to actually know the state of all these blockchains out there.

Jain then proceeded to run through the process of placing an order on Borderless exchange, describing settings such as specifying the minimum order fill amount, which could be set at, for example, half of the total order. It’s also possible to specify the amount of time the order should be live for. Should it fail to fill in that time, it will auto cancel and the NRG will be returned to the trader. Borderless is now available to download and trial in safe mode, so users can familiarize themselves with the system, ahead of the exchange going live for trading. When it does, Borderless will face competition from several other DEXs due to launch soon including Binance DEX and Nash, which was also previewed this week by news.Bitcoin.com.

What are your thoughts on Block Collider’s new DEX and the other decentralized exchanges on the verge of launching? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the mentioned company or any of its affiliates or services. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

Cryptocurrency ATM operator Värdex Suisse has introduced BHC support to its devices. The company is a financially regulated entity that provides access to digital assets through its teller machines, POS services and partnerships with retailers in Switzerland and abroad.

Bitcoin Cash Available on All Värdex ATMs

“Bitcoin cash (BCH) is online and available now on all our ATMs!” Värdex Suisse announced in a tweet on Tuesday. The company claims it maintains the largest crypto ATM network in the Alpine nation. Its website shows 26 ATM locations in major Swiss cities such as Bern, Zurich, Geneva, Basel, Lucern, and Lausanne.

The company’s devices support the purchase and sale of three other leading cryptocurrencies as well: bitcoin core (BTC), ethereum (ETH) and litecoin (LTC).

Värdex Suisse AG, originally founded as Bitcoin Suisse AG, has been operating independently since 2017 in order to meet the high demand in the retail sector for the kind of services it offers. The company is a member of the Financial Services Standards Association (VQF) and part of the Crypto Valley Zug Community.

Värdex also says its mission is to make buying and selling digital currencies “as seamless and easy as a regular visit to a bank ATM.” It is doing that through a number of partnerships, a recent example being the recently announced crypto exchange service offered by Liechtenstein’s post office with the help of the Swiss company.

350 ATMs Across Europe Support BCH

Switzerland is one of several countries in Europe that have made efforts to create favorable conditions for crypto companies and blockchain businesses. Its Crypto Valley, centered in the Canton of Zug, has expanded significantly over the last couple of years. It currently numbers about 750 companies including those based in neighboring Liechtenstein.

The business-friendly conditions and regulations have catalyzed the growth of the crypto-related services offered in the country. They include payment and teller services providing secure access to digital coins and increasing their mainstream adoption.

According to data compiled by tracker website Coinatmradar, there are currently 52 bitcoin ATMs and crypto tellers across Switzerland. Around half of them now support purchases and sales of bitcoin cash.

The number of BCH trading devices has been growing in Europe as well, reaching around 350 across the region. However, the Old Continent is still lagging behind the U.S. where almost 1,200 ATMs offer bitcoin cash.

Is the number of ATMs supporting BCH growing in your region? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Värdex Suisse.

At Bitcoin.com there’s a bunch of free helpful services. For instance, have you seen ourTools page? You can even lookup the exchange rate for a transaction in the past. Or calculate the value of your current holdings. Or create a paper wallet. And much more.

IBM claims that six banks will issue stablecoins using its World Wire protocol which is based on the Stellar network. According to the tech giant, three banks have publicly committed to the initiative, and the remainder will reveal themselves soon. The announcement joins the resurgence of blockchain razzmatazz this year that feels eerily similar to the last time distributed ledger technology (DLT) was the cat’s meow back in 2016.

With JP Morgan’s newly announced coin and Digital Asset replacing Blythe Masters with new CEO Yuval Rooz, it seems blockchain hype is steaming up once again like a warm pile of cow manure. One prime example is IBM recently making headlines when it announced that six banks signed letters of intent to produce stablecoins using the IBM protocol called World Wire. The barrage of IBM’s meaningless blockchain announcements over the years shows the fervor with which the multinational tech firm has tried to remain relevant. A few people might recall the distributed ledger mania three years ago when IBM told the world it planned to launch “the largest commercial uses of blockchain” by September 2016, back when everyone was gaga for enterprise blockchains that have produced nothing but media puffery.

IBM Blockchain is just an overpriced, rubbish database used to get a rubber stamp from enterprises that want to be able to tell their investors they’re “blockchain enabled”.

However, according to IBM’s vice president of blockchain technologies, Jerry Cuomo, and a slew of online publications, the system promised in 2016 was allegedly supposed to free some of the “$100 million in capital tied up at any given time in transaction disputes in the IBM Global Financing unit.” IBM even released a blockchain platform available for cloud developers that looks like a cheesy Javascript copy of the NXT blockchain with a quirky VS Code extension. IBM also started the Open Blockchain Initiative and worked with the Hyperledger project that year. But like the storm of Hyperledger announcements, R3 signing 60 banks, and projects like Citigroup’s ‘Citicoin,’ IBM’s largest commercial uses of blockchain seem to be all fluff. While public blockchains like BCH, BTC, and ETH have settled trillions of notional value in a permissionless manner we should probably ask: What have all these corporate blockchains done in the last few years?

The lackluster IBM Blockchain 2.0 beta platform. Media publications are often eager to report on these so-called blockchains but rarely test them or even look at the protocol.

Technobabble Blockchains With Zero Innovation

Now IBM is using the Stellar protocol and claims that the “IBM Blockchain World Wire makes it possible for financial institutions to clear and settle cross-border payments in seconds.” Reading IBM’s World Wire homepage is like having a horrible flashback to 2015, however, where it’s blockchain mania all over again. The usual reasons stated for utilizing IBM’s blockchain include lowering clearing costs, cheap cross-border payments, and the ledger reduces a lot of time. IBM’s website insinuates that unlike those crazy libertarian bitcoiners, the corporation is willing to work with the current financial incumbents.

“Bitcoin mania has led some to believe that banks are no longer needed for secure global money transfer — Banks, however, disagree,” explains IBM’s World Wire website.

Of course, the general population and even the media publishing IBM’s blockchain fluff pieces about their quest to secure the globe’s money transfer system only get a gist of what the company wants the public to see. As with most enterprise blockchain projects, it’s all closed door deals and the media gets a technobabble press release about some banks using the platform. Whether it be IBM, Hyperledger, R3, or JPM coin, there’s nothing exciting about these enterprise blockchain solutions. Yet we read about these vacuous initiatives every day in some of the most prominent crypto and financial news outlets.

Many of the projects are downright absurd, like when everyone got excited about Bumble Bee tuna products being verified on the blockchain. Private blockchain swaps and financial banks trading stablecoins add nothing new to the table: take away the fancy wrapped DLT packaging and all you’re left with is a generic database. Cryptocurrency advocate Andreas Antonopoulos composed a tweet in 2016 that encapsulated the blockchain hype at the time.

‘Major banks complete first international transaction using a blockchain’ — You mean, the same thing bitcoin has done several million times?” Antonopoulos mocked.

Correction: Banks paid consultants thousands to do once what bitcoin does for pennies every day, thousands of times, better.

Right now there are many projects that are permissionless and have an open ledger for everyone to verify. Just because a blockchain project is backed by traditional big name incumbents doesn’t give it an edge over public cryptocurrency systems that have been around for a decade. The DLT-embellished stories large tech companies like IBM and banks like JP Morgan churn out are little more than a feeble attempt to stay relevant.

What do you think about IBM’s blockchain attempts over the years and other well known corporations developing enterprise digital ledgers? Let us know in the comments section below.

OP-ed disclaimer: This is an Op-ed article. The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own. Bitcoin.com is not responsible for or liable for any content, accuracy or quality within the Op-ed article. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the content. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any information in this Op-ed article.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Twitter, IBM Cloud, and IBM logos.

At Bitcoin.com there’s a bunch of free helpful services. For instance, have you seen ourTools page? You can even look up the exchange rate for a transaction in the past. Or calculate the value of your current holdings. Or create a paper wallet. And much more.

Silvergate Bank, headquartered in San Diego as a California state-chartered bank, started its cryptocurrency-related business in 2013. Now over 500 companies from the digital assets industry are using its services as one of the very few “bitcoin-friendly” banks based in the U.S.

Silvergate Files Amended IPO Prospectus

Silvergate Capital Corp., the parent of Silvergate Bank, filed an amended IPO prospectus with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on March 18 with updated data about its operation. According to the figures presented in the document, the bank’s openness to the cryptocurrency industry has continued to help it with attracting new customers.

In total, Silvergate had 542 clients working in the digital assets sector as of December 31, 2018, which is up over 12 percent in three months from the 483 clients it reported as of the third quarter of the year. The bank also already had 232 prospective digital currency customers by the end of 2018, going through various stages of its onboarding process, which includes extensive regulatory compliance due diligence.

Exchanges Drag Figures Down

Among its 542 clients, Silvergate Bank lists a group of 37 digital currency exchanges, including the five largest U.S. domiciled digital currency exchanges, such as Bitstamp, Circle and Genesis. The second biggest group is 142 companies developing new protocols, platforms and applications; mining operations and providers of other services, including Xapo and Paxos. The biggest group of clients is 363 institutional investors such as hedge funds, venture capital funds, private equity funds, family offices and traditional asset managers, including Kenetic and Polychain Capital.

Interestingly, the smaller group of 37 exchanges is dragging down the financial figures in terms of total client deposits that Silvergate Bank reported. As of September 30, 2018 it had $792.9 million in deposits from digital currency exchanges, $572.7 million in deposits from institutional investors and $227.5 million from the group of other companies. By December 31, these client deposits figures changed to $618.5 million, $577.5 million and $273.9 million respectively.

What do you think about the latest figures from Silvergate? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Verify and track bitcoin cash transactions on our BCH Block Explorer, the best of its kind anywhere in the world. Also, keep up with your holdings, BCH and other coins, on our market charts at Satoshi’s Pulse, another original and free service from Bitcoin.com.

At least 87 percent of cryptocurrency exchanges may have falsified their reported trade volumes, a new study claims. According to a review of the top 100 exchanges by analytics company The Tie, most of the trading volume on the world’s largest crypto trading platforms is suspect.

Suspicious Trading Volumes

“In total we estimated that 87 percent of exchanges’ reported trading volume was potentially suspicious and that 75 percent of exchanges had some form of suspicious activity occurring on them,” the company revealed in a series of tweets on its research findings.

“If each exchange averaged the volume per visit of CoinbasePro, Gemini, Poloniex, Binance, and Kraken, we would expect the real trading volume among the largest 100 exchanges to equal $2.1 billion per day. Currently that number is being reported as $15.9 billion,” added The Tie.

Trading volumes per exchange vs monthly web visits

Manipulation of trading volume data by exchanges has remained an area of concern within the cryptocurrency market. Several factors can artificially grow volume, making it look like there’s demand for a particular digital asset when interest is actually minimal or non-existent. Investors are often lured to exchanges with inflated volumes as that tends to create an element of trust and an impression of liquidity. However, doubts about the integrity of crypto markets could be preventing some professionals from entering the space and prompting closer regulatory scrutiny.

Inflated Volumes

In its study, The Tie looked at weighted average trading volume per user visit at major crypto exchanges Binance, Coinbase Pro, Poloniex, Gemini and Kraken – averaging $591 – and used similar metrics on other smaller exchanges. The New York-based company indicated that these exchanges were selected on account of their “large usage among institutions, reputation in the market, and because their web viewership appeared consistent with their reported trading volumes.”

It found that about 60 percent of exchanges reported volume that was 10 times higher than expected, at least as far as traffic to their websites was concerned. The practice was most prevalent at Bitmax, ZBG, Coinbene, Lbank and BW, the researchers alleged. Binance, Kraken, Coinbase Pro, and Poloniex had expected volume in line with their reported trading volume.

Expected real trading volume/Reported trading volume per exchange

While website viewership metrics don’t account for API or mobile app trading, they do provide a good basis of comparison across exchanges to identify suspicious reported volumes, explained The Tie. “Our team set out to determine whether volumes reported on cryptocurrency exchanges were genuine. We started by pulling a list of the top 100 exchanges by traded volume over the last 30 days,” the company said.

It continued: “We then used Similar Web website viewership metrics to calculate the estimated 30 days traffic to each exchange’s website. After doing this, we divided the reported volume for each exchange by the number of monthly website visits to determine the reported volume per visit.”

What do you think about exchanges reporting suspicious trading volume? Let us know in the comments section below.

Liquidity has shifted away from the top gaining crypto assets, with only six of the week’s 30 top performing markets currently riding 24-hour volume of seven figures or higher in USD. ABBC comprises the most liquid of the week’s top losers, currently ranking as the sixth poorest performing market of the last seven days after the resolution of the court case between Abbc Coin and Alibaba.

BTCP Comprises Second Worst Performing Market of Last Seven Days

Bitcoin private (BTCP) is currently ranking as the worst performing market of the past week after shedding nearly 47% of its value in seven days.

The heavy sell-off comes less than two weeks after the project behind the controversial fork shared a “legal letter” that had been issued to Hitbtc in response to the exchange removal of BTCP pairings from its platform. BTCP is trading for $0.353, or 8,730 satoshis, with a 24-hour volume of $490,000 – up more than 50x when compared with just a few days ago.

ABBC Plummets Following Resolution of Dispute Over ‘Alibabacoin’

The sixth worst performing crypto asset of the last seven days, abbc coin (ABBC), also comprises the market with the largest liquidity of this past week’s top losers.

The bearish momentum appears to have been driven by last week’s announcement that Abbc Coin and Alibaba had “reached a worldwide settlement of claims involving the use of the name Alibabacoin, with ABBC agreeing not to use trademarks that include the term Alibaba worldwide.” Abbc Coin also lost a preliminary copyright lawsuit filed by Alibaba during Oct. 2018.

ABBC is currently trading for $0.255, or 6,300 satoshis, after posting a nearly 38% drop in one week.

Liquidity Recedes From Weekly Gainers

This past week has seen very few of the strongest performing crypto assets rank with strong volume, with only six of the 30 top-performing markets exceeding daily trade volume of $1 million.

Truechain (TRUE) comprised the most liquid of this week’s strongest gainers, ranking 10th after gaining 97% in seven days.

As of this writing, TRUE is trading for $0.605, or 0.00015 BTC, and has a 24-hour trade volume of $58.63 million.

Do you think that we will start to see a stronger presence from high liquidity crypto assets among the top performing markets in coming months? Or will low caps continue to dominate the gainers rankings?

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Coinmarketcap

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